With BitTorrent the subject of so much news recently, including the high-profile case against torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay, it should come as no surprise that a recent report from BayTSP has identified BitTorrent as the number one source for downloading pirated content on the Internet. Along with eDonkey, the two are responsible for 90 percent of the infringement of BayTSP clients' copyrighted content.

BayTSP is a firm that specializes in identifying and tracking clients' copyrighted content online, as well as sending takedown notices to the likes of YouTube when copyright violations are found. The company has released its annual "Online Trends & Insight" report for 2008, compiled from tracking data for its unnamed 15 major studio clients over the last year.

In a ranking of top sources of pirated content, BitTorrent and eDonkey both retained the number one and two spots they had in last year's report, and had traded from 2006. These findings echo a report last year that showed BitTorrent traffic increasing about 24 percent over 2007. Ares, Gnutella, and DirectConnect P2P networks rounded out the top five, while video sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace, and DailyMotion were holding on to the bottom five. Coming in at number ten was Usenet—the OG of Internet forums—which has risen in popularity recently, mainly for filesharing.

In one study that tracked a particular TV show for one week on both BitTorrent and eDonkey, some interesting trends were noted between the two protocols. eDonkey use was mainly a European phenomenon, and had far more users than BitTorrent. Oddly enough, though, it took two to four days to download the TV episode in question using eDonkey, while it took anywhere from three to eleven hours to grab the same content from BitTorrent.

Data source: BayTSP

Spain, Italy, and France ranked as the top three countries for illicit filesharing worldwide, which the report attributed to those countries "lax copyright protection laws"—France's recent three-strikes foray notwithstanding. The US dropped from number one to number four, "largely as a result of stepped up responsiveness of US-based ISPs" to takedown notices, according to the report. UK, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Israel, and Canada also made the top ten.

Speaking of domestic ISPs, the largest ISP in the US, Comcast, earned the dubious honor of having the "most infringements of BayTSP client content in 2008." Whether or not you agree with Comcast's previous BitTorrent-targeting tactics, that does go a long way toward explaining the company's interest in blocking or otherwise "managing" P2P traffic on its network (The company has since adopted a protocol-agnostic management policy.) AT&T and Road Runner were not far behind Comcast, however, in the number of infringements identified on those networks.

The report noted that while 2008 saw a rise in prominence of video streaming sites like Hulu, ABC.com, and ComedyCentral.com, the sharing of TV, movies, and increasingly, live events, will continue to rise. Hulu and other ad-supported sites, together with the iTunes Store and Amazon Video on Demand, offer in most cases a reasonable alternative to piracy: loads of content, fast downloads, and (for the most part) reasonable prices. Further, BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa is currently working with video sharing sites like YouTube to help monetize the sharing of its clients' copyrighted content.

While there will always be some significant, nonzero number of people simply unwilling to pay for content, litigating against the likes of The Pirate Bay won't eliminate the problem or earn content providers any revenue. Instead, leveraging current technology to provide consumers with the content they want for a reasonable price and the convenience of on-demand viewing is the only sane move for content providers to make in the face of online piracy.

I just moved from the US to the UK and not having US TV and no access to Hulu anymore has pretty much caused me to go to TPB/EZTV as well. I'd gladly pay for it or watch commercials, but the shows I watch aren't available over here and even if I could pay for them in USD I can't download them because of my IP address. *sigh*

These numbers are no surprise to me. Perhaps if US content producers would realize this and be a bit more flexible internationally (with a truly good price), and they'd have something.

I forgot to record NCIS last night, so I downloaded it from a MegaUpload link someone posted to a blog. I've used BT and eD2K in the past to get TV shows, but downloading from MegaUpload is much faster. If I can't find them on such sites, I'll download them from the newsgroups, but I try to conserve my download credits.

'The US dropped from number one to number four, "largely as a result of stepped up responsiveness of US-based ISPs" to takedown notices.'

I am irate at this. Only softened because they did mention the likes of Hulu. Nonetheless, blindly attributing the lack of piracy on increase in law enforcement, while standing right next these new, easy methods for accessing content in a way customers want....it's moronic at best and evil at worst.

The whole study (and the whole ongoing discussion), frankly, vilifies BitTorrent way more than it should. BitTorrent is nothing more than a transmission protocol, and dividing it up by these numbers serves as nothing more than a lame justification to filter certain technologies (as the article points out). Could it be that part of the reason BitTorrent traffic is so heavily used for piracy is because few companies are willing to use the very valid technology for legitimate uses?

Yeah, piracy happens, and happens a lot. No one is surprised by this fact. That was never the point. Stop whining, accept that piracy is always going to happen, and make with the better products already!

Hulu and other ad-supported sites, together with the iTunes Store and Amazon Video on Demand, offer in most cases a reasonable alternative to piracy

Except when you live outside the US, then they are not alternatives at all.

I agree this is a huge problem that content providers need to get with the "Earth is Flat" program already. Having completely separate licensing and terms and other crap for different countries or regions is clearly contributing to the pirating problem. Hence, it's no surprise that European countries rank so high on BayTSP's chart.

Originally posted by TheException:'The US dropped from number one to number four, "largely as a result of stepped up responsiveness of US-based ISPs" to takedown notices.'

I am irate at this. Only softened because they did mention the likes of Hulu. Nonetheless, blindly attributing the lack of piracy on increase in law enforcement, while standing right next these new, easy methods for accessing content in a way customers want....it's moronic at best and evil at worst.

This... In the time hulu has come around I pretty much don't even bother torrenting shows I watch regularly, why bother when it's going to be on hulu anyways. Hell, hulu is even starting to compete with the anime fansub community in some cases. I've never even heard of someone I know knowing someone that got one of those letters that are supposedly the cause.

What I find funny is that we have a list of 10 countries where infringement notices have been sent out and Canada is at the bottom, yet jusat two weeks ago, we (Canada) were listed as a major source of copyright infringement by being placed on the "Priority Watch List" in the 301 report. A list that includes; China, Russia, Algeria, Argentina, Chile, India, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand and Venezuela. Only one of those countries (excluding Canada) is on the list of countries with the highest number of infringement notices sent to it, that's Israel. All these reports are a load of crap. I'd be more inclined to believe they are more than just politically motivated if there was a higher match up between them.

On the surface, it seems it would be fairly easy for the likes of Hulu and similar to set up regional servers (to manage bandwidth) and use location-based targeting for advertising, and go global. But they (Hulu) and others keep mentioning international rights issues as an impediment. I wonder if this isn't just another instance of content providers (a la RIAA) not realizing the value they can tap into at low cost and near immediate return while fixating on threats to old and diminishing sources of revenue(1) (intl broadcast syndication).

(1) In the case of Spain, eg, the ratio of local production vs US imports for prime-time viewing is increasing dramatically, with most US series now allocated to second-tier channels, except for a handful of mega-hit shows.

Folks, as a regular Ars reader from Spain I think that this comment deserves some additional points.

First, the study should define accurately what "piracy" means. Let me explain. In Spain, file sharing is not illegal or illicit or even inmoral. In Spain, "Piracy" is the act of selling intellectual property without paying its owner. I'm not 100% sure of the legal frameworks at other countries, but Spanish law is very clear about what is piracy, and thus prosecuted and what is not.

I tend to think that our legal framework is what ultimately makes sense. After all, sharing a song, movei or book file with other people is assimilable to just lending and borrowing the physical media. The artist or owner of the IP cannot claim any damages, as if the media were shared (analogous to what happens in a public library) he or she would not be losing any money as the people sharing the content would not buy it instead.

This is common sense. The owner of a song is not losing money because a group of friends sing his song in a bar. If the owner of the bar is charging the publicans for hearing the song, yes, the author should receive part of the money that is being earned by the performance.

Therefore, if the analysis is counting the many people that share files in Spain without any lucrative intentions, which I believe is the majority, it is seriously flawed.

To make things more confusing, the Spanish RIAA/MPAA equivalent (called the SGAE) has been lobbying for the past years trying to convince goverment that file sharing was damaging them. They have even managed to create a "tax" called the "digital canon" that is part of the price of almost any kind of digital media purchased. So yes, even the SD card of your digital camera is subject to this tax. In a move unbeknowst in the rest of the world, the SGAE (and other association related to script writers for TV shows) directly receives this tax and it is, in theory, distributing what is collected via this tax among the artist community.

What happens in truth is that the SAGE doles out a huge percentage of the earnings obtained via the "digital canon" among the big music labels and their artists. Coincidentally, some of the SGAE strongest supporters are former musicians with vested interests in collecting huge earnings for their past works but have not been able to produce anything of any musical value for the last two decades (this judgement is purely subjective but you should listen to the latest works of Ramoncin or Eduardo Bautista to really appreciate that you are in the SAGE board instead of releasing their work to the public)

So please, before declaring that Spain is topping the piracy charts, define well piracy. File sharing is not piracy, at least in Spain.

First, the study should define accurately what "piracy" means. Let me explain. In Spain, file sharing is not illegal or illicit or even inmoral.

I'm also Spanish (although I spend most of the time in California). My own experience is that when I'm in the US, having cheap on-line rentals (like iTunes + Apple TV) removes the motivation to look for pirated content. I'd rather pay $3.99 on iTunes and watch a movie right away than spend time searching for a movie in BitTorrent. Or I can go to Hulu and watch a TV show with a few commercials.

When I'm in Spain, on the other hand, I don't have the option to get that content legally (at least not in a way which resembles the impulse buy of iTunes or the commercial-supported Hulu). Suddenly, the most interesting option (even for a lazy person like me) is to go to BitTorrent.

If Spain had options for getting legal content easily, there would be less piracy (or lazy people like me would be less tempted by it...)

They definitely need to expand Hulu (or equivalent services) outside of the US. If I miss an episode of my favourite TV show midseason.. will I not watch the rest of the season (so as not to have any holes in the plot) and wait for the DVD to watch the episode I missed and beyond? Hell no - I'll watch it online.. if there is no legal way to do that, I'll have to download it from a torrent or something.

It's not like this is my preferred alternative in any way - I prefer to watch on my big screen tv rather than my.. rather small (by comparison) computer monitor.

Originally posted by d_jedi:They definitely need to expand Hulu (or equivalent services) outside of the US. If I miss an episode of my favourite TV show midseason.. will I not watch the rest of the season (so as not to have any holes in the plot) and wait for the DVD to watch the episode I missed and beyond? Hell no - I'll watch it online.. if there is no legal way to do that, I'll have to download it from a torrent or something.

It's not like this is my preferred alternative in any way - I prefer to watch on my big screen tv rather than my.. rather small (by comparison) computer monitor.

Ya, I'm with you on that. Right now I'm having to fill my DVR up because I missed the first 5 episodes of Reaper and I'm going to have to wait for them to rerun them before I can watch them.Oh and d_jedi, you should really hook your computer up to your tv, I've got mine hooked up to a 32 inch lcd and it rocks.

First, the study should define accurately what "piracy" means. Let me explain. In Spain, file sharing is not illegal or illicit or even inmoral.

I'm also Spanish (although I spend most of the time in California). My own experience is that when I'm in the US, having cheap on-line rentals (like iTunes + Apple TV) removes the motivation to look for pirated content. I'd rather pay $3.99 on iTunes and watch a movie right away than spend time searching for a movie in BitTorrent. Or I can go to Hulu and watch a TV show with a few commercials.

When I'm in Spain, on the other hand, I don't have the option to get that content legally (at least not in a way which resembles the impulse buy of iTunes or the commercial-supported Hulu). Suddenly, the most interesting option (even for a lazy person like me) is to go to BitTorrent.

If Spain had options for getting legal content easily, there would be less piracy (or lazy people like me would be less tempted by it...)

Exactly. Until newest TV shows are available on-line world wide as the shows start (not months/years later when local TV stations decide to buy em) that segment of piracy will always be high outside US.

If only Big Content providers thought as much about how to offer better services to lower piracy than waste so much money on anti piracy activities ...

To be precise, at this moment by law the spanish has to pay 500 million € for compensation for private copy, for copies make for personal use of the copier, through charges in several digital product to the SGAE and several other copyright management societies thats more than 15€ per "infringement" thats would be more that buying the product by itself, and is even more because how this is operated the societies get the money and then at the end of the year they are supposed to give back to the state the extra and you can imagine how get the money out of their pockets is going to be.

And due that you have to pay if you download as well as if you don't the spanish people is not even until it gets to the 500 million downloads a year.

Sorry dudes, the Spanish way doesn't fly. Back when there was just vinyl, cassette/VHS, or even CD/DVD, sharing with a few friends was fine. In the age of high-speed internet, putting content on BitTorrent just ain't right. You are potentially sharing with 6 billion "friends".

And what about this Spanish tax thing? So everyone pays an extra tax on all types of electronics to make up for the subset of people who download via BitTorrent/eDonkey? That makes no sense (except for the downloaders, woot!).

However, I agree with the biggest point people are making, if the content is legally available in a convenient and timely fashion, people will pay or watch ads. That should be the focus. But having reasonable and similar laws throughout the world is also important.

TheException - 'The US dropped from number one to number four, "largely as a result of stepped up responsiveness of US-based ISPs" to takedown notices.' I am irate at this. Only softened because they did mention the likes of Hulu. Nonetheless, blindly attributing the lack of piracy on increase in law enforcement, while standing right next these new, easy methods for accessing content in a way customers want....it's moronic at best and evil at worst.

No kidding....the US drop from 1 to 4 because we have the crappiest broadband in the civilized world.